"rloc" Variable Customizes your "Continue Shopping" Links

[Rutabaga]

Can I customize where the "continue shopping" buttons in my store link to?
By default, the "continue shopping" buttons in your Storefront will link to your store's homepage.

Many clients that host their shopping area on their own website prefer to have the "continue shopping" buttons in their account's checkout area return the customer to the page on their own website they came from, instead of their store's default home page. It is possible to control which page the "continue shopping" buttons in your store link to. They can even be set to link to the page the customer came from, or a completely different page on your website.

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Getting Started: Using Quick Links
If you host your store's shopping area on your own website, you are probably already familiar with the "Quick Links" Modular Merchant provides. (If you aren't yet familiar with Quick Links, information and examples of use start on page 95 of the MM Admin Manual.)

A typical Quick Link that adds a product to a customer's basket and then takes them to the first page of the checkout process might look like this:
modularmerchant.com/clients/MyAccount/quick_checkout.php?id=12&qty=1

The "id" variable determines which product is added to the customer's basket.
The "qty" variable determines how many of the product is added to the customer's basket.

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Introducing the "rloc" variable (Return Location)
All Modular Merchant Quick Links support an additional optional variable: rloc ## which stands for "return location". If the rloc variable is included in the Quick Link, the system will record it into memory. The "continue shopping" buttons will link to the address provided in the rloc variable until another rloc variable is provided.

A typical Quick Link that uses the rloc variable may look like this:
modularmerchant.com/clients/MyAccount/quick_checkout.php?id=12&qty=1&rloc=www.mysite.com/mypage.html

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Why can't I just send the customer to the previous page in their "web browser history"?
A similar concept is to simply return the customer to the previous page in their web browser's history; the equivalent to the user clicking their browser's "Back" button. In fact, previous versions of Modular Merchant's account System Settings included this option. (See figure 01 below.)


Figure 01: Controlling the "Continue Shopping" links in your Modular Merchant Storefront.

This System Setting was removed in Modular Merchant version 2.011. Why?!? The nature of Shopping Cart software, including Modular Merchant, is to reload the same page several times in a row in certain circumstances. (For example, when clicking the "Add to Basket" button, the page the customer is on is reloaded in order to process the command and update the display of the contents of their shopping basket. To the customer, the reloading of the page is nearly invisible.) Each time the current page is reloaded in order to perform an action, another copy of that page is added to the web browser's history. Thus, if a customer clicks their browser's "Back" button, they will often be returned to the previous state of the same page.

Setting the "continue shopping" buttons throughout the storefront to use the previous page in the customer's browser history would have this same affect. In certain circumstances, it could even cause the previous action to be performed again ## such as incorrectly adding another unit of a product to their Basket!

As an alternative to relying on the browser's history, we developed the rloc variable, which prevents accidentally re-performing a previous action, guarantees that the customer is returned to the correct store page when they click "continue shopping", and even allows store Administrators to link the "continue shopping" buttons to other pages in their store, such as a page containing products related to the item the customer just added to their basket!

If a system can be developed that will allow the software to use the browser history without problems, support for it will be returned. In the meantime, using the rloc variable in your Quick Links should provide equal or greater control of the "continue shopping" buttons throughout your storefront. If you have any questions, comments or concerns on the use of the rloc variable, feel free to post them here. Thank you!

[Rutabaga]

Modular Merchant version 2.013, will introduce the "srloc" variable (Secure Return Location)

Need to return a customer to a secure web page? Use srloc. All Modular Merchant Quick Links support the optional variable: srloc ## which stands for "secure return location". If the srloc variable is included in the Quick Link, the system will record it into memory. The "continue shopping" buttons will link to the "https://" version of the address provided in the srloc variable until another srloc, or rloc, variable is provided.

A typical Quick Link that uses the srloc variable may look like this:
modularmerchant.com/clients/MyAccount/quick_checkout.php?id=12&qty=1&srloc=www.mysite.com/mypage.html

Using the above Quick Link, the "Continue Shopping" buttons and links in the store would return the user to:
https://www.mysite.com/mypage.html

[CMarier]

This topic is being locked because it's about a feature specific to Modular Merchant version 2. Modular Merchant version 3 improves on this feature, making this forum article obsolete.